Tunisian Islamist Finds Hope in Challenging Time

TUNIS — In the tense weeks before the military took power in Egypt, the leader of Tunisia’s dominant Islamic party says, he tried to mediate between President Mohamed Morsi and his opponents in a last-ditch effort to salvage the region’s most important test of whether Islamist instincts could be reconciled with democracy.

The effort at mediation failed spectacularly, Rachid al-Ghannouchi, leader of the party, Ennahda, acknowledged in an interview last week. The confrontation on Egypt’s streets now endangers the whole region, he said.

Since then, Mr. Ghannouchi has found the Tunisian government, led by Ennahda, also imperiled by a series of shocks. A liberal opposition leader was assassinated in July, and an ambush by militants killed eight soldiers. Opposition groups have rallied daily demanding the resignation of the government, just a year and half in power, and accuse it of giving too much latitude to extremists.

“In Tunis there was an attempt at imitating or recreating the Egyptian scenario” of ousting an Islamist government, Mr. Ghannouchi said Wednesday in Tunis. “I think this has failed, and we are now, I hope, approaching the end of the crisis.”

That remains to be seen. It is as precarious a time as nearly any since the start of the Arab Spring for the efforts to show that Islamic parties can create stable and competent governments.

The Egyptian military’s ouster of Mr. Morsi in early July and its widening crackdown on his supporters in the Muslim Brotherhood — a kindred movement to Mr. Ghannouchi’s own — were jarring setbacks for Islamic parties in the region, which view it as an army conspiracy that duped the opposition. Libya’s government, meanwhile, is increasingly losing ground to lawlessness and extremist militias.

In Tunisia, the assassination in July of Mohamed Brahmi, an opposition leader, sent thousands into the streets, shaking the government and Ennahda’s grip on power as its popular support has eroded amid a declining economy and worsening security. Some accuse Ennahda of being soft on extremists.

But on Saturday, tens of thousands of Tunisians took to the streets of the capital in a show of support for the government, Reuters reported. “No to coups, yes to elections,” many shouted.

Mr. Ghannouchi remains optimistic, betraying, perhaps, the patience of a 72-year-old man twice imprisoned under the old government. He spent 22 years in exile before returning to Tunisia in 2011, and has worked for the ideal of political Islam since founding the Islamic Tendency Movement in the 1980s. On his return he chose not to run for any political post, but he remains the pre-eminent figure in Ennahda and so a powerful influence over the government.

“The main idea that we have is a democratic government that is based on consensus, and that brings together the moderate Islamists and the moderate secularists,” he said. “This is the main characteristic of the Tunis experience, or if you want to call it, model, and I don’t think what happened will bring this experiment to an end.”

As the region’s lonely flag-bearers try to show that Islamists can govern democratically and inclusively, he and his party can hardly afford despair. Instead, Mr. Ghannouchi — a renowned Islamic thinker, and an alumnus of Cairo and Damascus universities — highlighted several differences between events in Egypt and Tunisia, which, he said, may yet serve as an example for the broader region.

The main one, he said, is that his party, which won elections in 2011, has chosen to work in a coalition government with secular parties and sought a consensus in drafting a new constitution and a legal framework for elections. Tunisia is still searching for its identity, and the government’s 51 percent majority is not enough for it to be able to rule, nor is the two-thirds majority it can muster to pass the constitution being drafted now sufficient, he said at forum here last month. “That’s why we need a consensus.”

In the interview he said it did not matter that there was no mention of Shariah law or an Islamic state in the constitution, something Egypt’s Islamists insisted on. Ennahda settled for a lighter wording that Islam is the religion of the nation. “The values of justice, liberty and equality are Islamic values, and they are in the constitution,” he said.

Even since the turmoil set off by Mr. Brahmi’s assassination, a majority of Tunisians have chosen not to join the protests, he said, since they know that to dismiss the government and the elected National Constituent Assembly is a recipe for chaos.

“If anyone wants to topple the government, they do not have to wait years,” he said. “They only have to wait a few months and they will have the chance to topple this government democratically through the ballot box.”

In the face of renewed pressure since the assassination, Mr. Ghannouchi said he was ready to offer more concessions. “We are open to discussing all ideas that are presented in the political arena,” he said. The government has announced a timetable to pass the constitution by the end of August and has set elections for Dec. 17.

Mr. Ghannouchi said Ennahda would drop all remaining objections on the constitution and consider all proposals for changes in the administration, including even cabinet ministers, and regional governors. Besides the prime minister, only 5 of the 24 cabinet ministers are Ennahda members anyway, he pointed out.

He said the only red line was a refusal to dissolve the Constituent Assembly, because now it is the only elected body that represents the will of the people.

Mr. Ghannouchi and his party are facing criticism from two sides. Their supporters are disappointed that Ennahda has failed to meet its promises to introduce an Islamist system, and complain that it has been too lenient on its opponents and members of the former government of President Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali.

Opposition parties say Ennahda reneged on previous offers to compromise and is playing games to prolong its period in power. “The government has no credit at all,” Beji Caid Essebsi, a former prime minister and leader of the largest opposition bloc, said in an interview. “They say anything they like, and the people don’t believe them anymore.”

He also charged that Ennahda had fostered gangs that use violence against its political rivals.

Mr. Ghannouchi was unmoved, attributing the turbulence to what he described as Tunisia’s “post-revolutionary phase.”

“In these phases you find some forces want to take us back to the pre-revolution phase,” he said in Arabic as his son, Moadh, his chief of staff, translated into English, “and also you find the emergence of radical groups both on the right and the left.” Accusations connecting such radicals to his party or its supporters lack credibility, he said.

There is no doubt that Mr. Morsi’s ouster was a severe blow for Mr. Ghannouchi, who attended a conference in Cairo at the beginning of June with a delegation of Ennahda members.

He said he had carried the demands of Hamdeen Sabahi, a leader of Egypt’s main opposition bloc, to Mr. Morsi, trying to help him thread a course that would save his administration. Mr. Morsi agreed to virtually all of them, a member of the delegation said.

“We found they were willing to change the government and even have a technocratic government, and they were even willing to draft a consensual electoral law, and we advised them that they must be flexible,” said Ameur Larayedh, the chief of Mr. Ghannouchi’s political bureau, who was at the negotiations. “But things escalated and reached a confrontation.”

Mr. Ghannouchi said he shared Western countries’ desire to work together to find a way out of the crisis, as far gone as it seemed. Mr. Morsi could be released and returned to a symbolic position of president with an independent prime minister or caretaker government to oversee the run-up to elections, he suggested, while the military could be guaranteed that it would not be prosecuted for recent events.

Mr. Ghannouchi said he could restart the dialogue.

“We need measures that calm down the situation: the release of political prisoners, and to stop the pursuit of the Muslim Brotherhood leadership and the media attacks from both sides,” he said. But even as he spoke the Egyptian military appeared to be widening its crackdown.

A version of this article appears in print on , on Page A8 of the New York edition with the headline: Tunisian Islamist Finds Hope in Challenging Time. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe